The massacre, the culmination of an extensive strike against Colorado coal mines, resulted in the violent deaths of between 19 and 26 people; reported death tolls vary but include two women and eleven children, asphyxiated and burned to death under a single tent.[1] The deaths occurred after a daylong fight between militia and camp guards against striking workers. Ludlow was the deadliest single incident in the southern Colorado Coal Strike, which lasted from September 1913 through December 1914. The strike was organized by the
United Mine Workers of America against coal mining companies in Colorado. The three largest companies involved were the
Rockefeller family-owned Colorado Fuel & Iron Company, the
Rocky Mountain Fuel Company, and the Victor-American Fuel Company.

In retaliation for Ludlow, the miners armed themselves and attacked dozens of mines over the next ten days, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard along a 40-mile front from
Trinidad to
Walsenburg.[2] The entire strike would cost between 69 and 199 lives. Thomas G. Andrews described it as the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States".[3]

The Ludlow Massacre was a watershed moment in American labor relations. Historian
Howard Zinn described the Ludlow Massacre as "the culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history".[4] Congress responded to public outcry by directing the
House Committee on Mines and Mining to investigate the incident.[5] Its report, published in 1915, was influential in promoting
child labor laws and an eight-hour work day.

Background

Photo, Ludlow Tent Colony, prior to the Ludlow Massacre. Caption reads: "THE COLORADO TENT COLONY SHOT UP BY THE MILITIA, Ludlow, a canvas community of 900 souls, was riddled with machine guns shooting 400 bullets a minute. Then the tents were burned. The site is private property leased by the miners' union, which has supported the colony seven months."

At its peak in 1910, the coal mining industry of Colorado employed 15,864 people, accounting for 10 percent of those employed in the state.[8] Colorado's coal industry was dominated by a handful of operators. The largest,
Colorado Fuel and Iron, was the largest coal operator in the west, as well as one of the nation's most powerful corporations, at one point employing 7,050 individuals and controlling 71,837 acres (290.71 km2) of coal land.[9] The Colorado Fuel & Iron Company was purchased by
John D. Rockefeller in 1902, and nine years later he turned his controlling interest in the company to his son,
John D. Rockefeller, Jr., who managed the company from his offices at
26 Broadway in
New York.[10]

Mining was dangerous and difficult work.
Colliers in Colorado were at constant risk for explosion, suffocation, and collapsing mine walls. In 1912, the death rate in Colorado's mines was 7.055 per 1,000 employees, compared to a national rate of 3.15.[11] In 1914, the
United States House Committee on Mines and Mining reported that "Colorado has good mining laws and such that ought to afford protection to the miners as to safety in the mine if they were enforced, yet in this State the percentage of fatalities is larger than any other, showing there is undoubtedly something wrong in reference to the management of its coal mines."[12] Miners were generally paid according to tonnage of coal produced, while so-called "dead work", such as shoring up unstable roofs, was often unpaid.[12] According to historian Thomas G. Andrews, the tonnage system drove many poor and ambitious colliers to gamble with their lives by neglecting precautions and taking on risk, with consequences that were often fatal.[13] Between 1884 and 1912, mining accidents claimed the lives of more than 1,700 Coloradans.[14] In 1913 alone, "104 men would die in Colorado’s mines, and 6 in the mine workings on the surface, in accidents that widowed 51 and left 108 children fatherless."[15]

Colliers had little opportunity to air their grievances. Many colliers resided in
company towns, in which all land, real estate, and amenities were owned by the mine operator, and which were expressly designed to inculcate loyalty and squelch dissent.[16]Welfare capitalists believed that anger and unrest among the workers could be placated by raising colliers' standard of living, while subsuming it under company management. Company towns indeed brought tangible improvements to the lives of many colliers and their families, including larger houses, better medical care, and broader access to education.[17] However, ownership of the towns provided companies considerable control over all aspects of workers' lives, and this power was not always used to augment public welfare. Historian
Philip S. Foner has described company towns as "
feudal domain[s], with the company acting as lord and master. ... The 'law' consisted of the company rules. Curfews were imposed. Company guards - brutal thugs armed with machine guns and rifles loaded with
soft-point bullets - would not admit any 'suspicious' stranger into the camp and would not permit any miner to leave." Furthermore, miners who raised the ire of the company were liable to find themselves and their families summarily evicted from their homes.[18]

Frustrated by working conditions which they felt were unsafe and unjust, colliers increasingly turned to
unionism. Nationwide, organized mines boasted 40 percent fewer fatalities than nonunion mines.[19] Colorado miners had repeatedly attempted to unionize since the state's first strike in 1883. The
Western Federation of Miners organized primarily hard rock miners in the
gold and
silver camps during the 1890s. Beginning in 1900, the United Mine Workers of America began organizing coal miners in the
western states, including southern Colorado. The union decided to focus on the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company because of its harsh management tactics under the conservative and distant Rockefellers and other investors. To break or prevent strikes, the coal companies hired
strike breakers, mainly from Mexico and southern and eastern Europe. The Colorado Fuel & Iron Company's management mixed immigrants of different nationalities in the mines, a practice which discouraged communication that might lead to organization.